Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a data processing apparatus having at least one temperature sensor, at least one fan for cooling the data processing apparatus, a monitoring unit connected to the temperature sensor and to the fan, and at least one hard disk having a temperature sensor. The fan can be controlled as a function of measured values from the temperature sensor.
Modern data processing apparatus are equipped with a complex temperature monitoring device of this type in order to ensure, even for a high-performance data processing apparatus and its individual components, that temperatures which exceed permissible limit values do not occur in individual areas of the data processing apparatus, or in the housing in which it is accommodated.
In previously known data processing apparatus, the cooling always worked at full power, which ensured that no overheating can occur. One problem in this case was that a large amount of cooling power is also associated with producing a large amount of noise. For this reason, new data processing apparatus have been equipped with a fan that can be controlled as a function of temperature and that is operated at full power only when this is also necessary. When the temperature of the data processing apparatus or the temperature in its housing is low, the fan is either switched off entirely or is operated at a reduced power.
However, during operation with a low cooling power as a standard, the risk that individual areas of the data processing apparatus will become too hot increases. This is due to the fact that individual components are very heavily loaded and in consequence produce a large amount of heat, while other components are loaded to a lesser extent and thus also require less cooling power. The load on individual components depends not only on the respective configuration of the data processing apparatus, but also on the respective application. In an application that includes intensive processing of graphics data, the graphics chip is, of course, more heavily loaded than in a pure text processing application.
In order to take account of the large number of temperature-critical components, data processing apparatus often have a number of temperature sensors that record temperature measurement values at various points in the data processing apparatus and in the housing, and provide these temperature measurement values in order to control the fan or fans. At least one housing fan is generally provided as the fan, and is normally integrated in the power supply. Furthermore, a processor fan is also provided, and additionally cools the main processor. Particularly in the case of servers, a number of fans are provided that take account of the particularly large amount of heat that is produced, or that are provided in redundant form in order to improve the reliability of the overall system.
However, one problem is that data processing devices also have additional installed components that are not integrated in the temperature control concept of the data processing apparatus. Hard disks are particularly critical in this case, since they also produce a large amount of heat. A high hard disk temperature is detected by temperature sensors that are fitted in the housing in the vicinity of the hard disk or on the installation cage. One problem in this case is that there is a relatively long time interval between an unacceptably high temperature occurring in the hard disk and the identification by the temperature sensors that the limit value has been exceeded. This can damage the hard disk without this being identified in good time by the temperature sensors and without it being possible to avoid this damage by an appropriate fan control. Modern hard disks admittedly often have integrated temperature sensors, but these cannot be used for fan control. One possible solution to the problem is to operate the fans “on suspicion” at a higher power level than is necessary on the basis of the instantaneous temperature measured values. However, this once again leads to producing a greater amount of noise, which is generally regarded as disturbing and should be avoided.